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Does keeping your legs up in the air after sex help you get pregnant? I read you should try to lie down and let gravity do its thing.
—This Seems Weird
There is no published data on the impact of sex positions, or of what you do after sex, on fertility. You will often hear that positions, like missionary or doggy style, that get the sperm closer to the cervix are better. This is based on a kind of logic but not on any actual data. And even from a logic perspective, it’s unlikely to make a large difference.
Similarly, the idea that lying down or putting your feet in the air would help is based on some logic about giving sperm time to swim. Could this make a marginal difference? Maybe. But that difference would be very marginal, and we have no data to support it.
There are no downsides to lying still for a while, or putting your legs up, or picking some particular sex position. But if you’re looking to help sperm have an easier time getting to the egg, you are better off investing in the sperm themselves, which means keeping the testicles cool and avoiding heavy alcohol or drug use.
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Good article. If any position or post-coital ritual made much difference to fertility than there likely would have been an intense selection pressure that would have made it be totally prevalent.